Pregnancy Licence and Birth Control

Updated on October 16, 2012

I had a chat with my friend as usual, we turned our topic to pregnancy, then to Pregnancy License (PL, Zhun Sheng Zheng in Chinese) policy in China.

Chinese government has "one couple may have one child" family planning policy, so every couple can only have one child and no more. But my oldest sister has four children, my second sister has two, and my brother has two children, too. My wife asked me how can my brother let his daughter delivered in hospital and got birth certificate for his daughter. I said, my brother hasn't obtain a PL and they haven't got birth certificate for their daughter, and therefore she hasn't been registered, so she has Hukou or registered residence, basically she is a "black person", such as something in a black market. She is not 'protected by Chinese government, or has no rights for anything, include 9 years compulsory education.

Because my brother had his first child before applying a marriage certificate and without obtaining a PL, they got fined 20, 000 RMB.

When we talked about this in Chinese, we couldn't feel the weirdness of Pregnancy License. But when I asked how to translate Zhun Sheng Zheng into English, we started to feel the absurdness of this policy. I searched "Pregnancy License" in google, and found crazy people try to fix the social decline in United Kingdom, and suggested that they can limit the number of births from those that depend economically on the country, whilst those that maintain a fit, healthy, economically thriving environment can apply for more children, and if passed reproduce. He may think this happens only in Scientific Fictions, never realized that this kind of things is reality in China. Chinese government adopted PL policy in order to control the population, this British tried to fix the social decline.

A sample pregnancy license

The man is filling a form to apply a license

Two mock pregnance licenses in wedding ceremony, for fun.

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